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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386102">A Case of You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoanieLSpeak/pseuds/JoanieLSpeak'>JoanieLSpeak</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Inspired by Fanart, Light Angst, M/M, POV First Person, POV Will Graham, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Vignette</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 15:20:23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23386102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoanieLSpeak/pseuds/JoanieLSpeak</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A little vignette on a warm Georgian night, inspired by nephila_clavipes' beautiful <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/13797165/chapters/31785114#workskin">sixth installment of the Hannibal Lecter Wank Bank</a> as well as Joni Mitchell's song A Case of You.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Case of You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nephila_clavipes/gifts">nephila_clavipes</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>As my readers know, I've been out of commission for a while, but since the outbreak, I've felt compelled to find some time to contribute something – anything – to help entertain those staying at home right now. I've loved nephila's art since I first saw it on Tumblr eons ago and have been meaning to write something inspired by it for two years now (jfc, two years). Anyway, sorry about the delay on Unhitched. I have another project in the works, but my beta is also my cellmate for the time being so you know how that goes. I hope the void is treating you all well. Stay safe.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“This isn’t a test,” he says to me. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I know. It might not be a test, but he is certainly evaluating me, and this half-lie ruins the majesty of the moon rising over the ridge.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s for your and my amusement,” he continues. He has to fight the crickets for my attention and he hates it. “You remember fun, Will? We used to have a lot of that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s what he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Just read it,” he urges. His stool creaks, and I hope it suddenly cracks under the weight of his ego. “There is no right or wrong answer. I’m just curious.” The stool creeks again, but no crack.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s been twenty minutes of him staring at me while I feverishly scribble, and now the ink-stained napkin in my hand is dampening like the shadowy mist rolling over the mountains. “Does my silence bother you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Not at all.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I don’t want to read it. I throw a fit in my head and it sounds an awful lot like my father. I think he can see that bothersome realization on my face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“First line,” he says. “Wow me with your downhome charm. I won’t judge. My lips are sealed for the time being.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He just judged me. Downhome.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This man doesn’t belong here – not on a porch. Not in this valley. Not anywhere, really. He feels intentionally unintentional everywhere he steps, like the snarky drama kid who insists on being the lead from Fiddler On the Roof to The Wizard of Oz. I can do it, they say, sleeves rolled up. Watch how much I bleed into the scene. And he does, the little shit. He bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This could all be set in Italy. We could be performing in France. Here might be Cuba for shits and giggles. It doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s say here is Georgia. The state, not the country. Sit a spell, he’d say. Drink me up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hold up my empty wine glass. “You going to hog the whole bottle or share with the class?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He begrudgingly but somehow happily sits up on that creaky stool and pours me some. “You don’t have to stall,” he says, “I doubt whatever you’ve come up with will send me packing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Five, seven, five, right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This is so stupid.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles and nods in response.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I toss the napkin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s stupid.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The bar napkin gets caught in an updraft and opens on a sleepy red Azalia about four feet from his arm, relaxed on the railing like it's heading to bed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I sip and stare at it. The flower flutters and the napkin waves a little. I gulp. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Five. Seven. Five. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s reaching for it when I blurt, “I hunt and you fish.” Each syllable gets counted on my fingers like it’s the most important part of this process. “You–caught–me–be–fore–we–fell … and uh.” I feel like a fool. I can’t look at him. “It was beautiful.” I finish my drink, grab the napkin, and smear it across the sweating bottle on the table between us. The label is written in Icelandic, I think, with a sheep or a goat. A ruminant. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I hunt and you fish,” he repeats.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do they grow grapes in Iceland? I didn’t know there were a lot of vineyards in Iceland. Seems like it would be too cold.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You caught me before we fell …,” he says slowly and thinks. “You’ll like Iceland. Then you’ll hate Svalbard. But there’s a small town up there with a lot of history. Deep time history. Underland stuff.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I huff. The ruminant is draped in very small grapes. “You know, Champagne grapes are really tiny,” I say. Not sure why. This isn’t Champagne or even sparkling. “Did you know that? Like little beads. Champagne grapes. You knew that ...”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“They are called black Corinth everywhere by here,” he says absently, then completes my sorry poem like he’s contemplating the consciousness of space dust, “It was beautiful.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s warm out here. I’m warm out here. And he’s smiling and that makes my face burn like a thousand suns even though it’s nearly midnight.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” I ask, but I’m not ready for whatever that answer might be. “Svalbard sounds cold.” I clear my throat. “But I guess it’s time for my biannual dousing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s still smiling, and I think I am, too, like a chimp baring its teeth at the zoo because that’s all it ever sees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks through my face. Or into it. It makes me feel like my whole body’s turned to clay and he’s molding it with nothing but the pressure of his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Five. Seven. Five,” I say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Five. Seven. Five,” he says again and empties the dregs of the bottle into his own glass. “Do you like it?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do.” I did. “Good wine in Canada, though. Can’t beat that. And we don’t have to go as north as the arctic circle.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snickers. “Svalbard is nearly at the Pole.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Chilly. “I’ll be sure to pack some long johns.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll be packing light for that trip,” he says. The poem business is dropped, and I can’t be happier for it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oh yeah? Just the thirty camels then?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles. “One pack each.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>That’s light.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One pack and Joni, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He huffs and conveniently doesn’t answer. “I’ll get more wine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He stands and gathers the plates and the empty bottle. I see him palm the soggy napkin before returning to the house.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’ll pocket it. He’ll smell it. I’ve watched him. He doesn’t hide affection or infatuation or even obsession. He’s too prideful to be perturbed by the embarrassments of a simpleton.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joni was his gift to me, you see. She was one of those rare gifts that when it’s presented to you, it sort of pops you out of time and space. You feel your brain warm and sigh as it imprints the memory of receiving such a profound thing. Maybe it was your first bicycle one lazy, snowed-in Christmas as a kid. Maybe it was a special book from a teacher you had in high school. Maybe it was just a little kid’s red and blue scribble, but that scribble held more honesty and understanding than all your therapists combined. You somehow live and remember living the memory simultaneously, and you can go back and feel it whenever you want. You are present within it. All in. Forever.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Joni is a goddess, and I fell in love the moment I saw her. I felt her long, slender neck. Her hourglass shape against my belly. She was a sweet girl. She hummed like I hummed, and there was so much beauty trapped inside her, it echoed with every strum and kiss of my fingers across her. Her beauty was all there was and all there ever would be for just a few minutes in a Spanish hotel almost three years ago.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s with me on the porch and I pick her up. So sweet. She giggles when my finger slides up her, and I nearly do the same.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t just her rosewood or inlay. It was what she meant.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He knew what I left behind when we fell from grace five years ago. In his travels, he’d never left behind more than a few dirty rooms of no consequence to him. I left behind all I’d ever been or known. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But, much to my surprise, there was a human piece of him still swimming around in his skull. It was just compassionate enough to know how to pretend to care about my sacrifice for just a few precious minutes walking down a sunny street in Vejer. Those imprinted minutes – the ones that left such a profound impression on me – came to fruition one morning after a particularly ruthless and sweat-soaked battle with my unconsciousness self.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He brought her in and left her at the foot of my bed, the most beautiful guitar I’d ever seen. She glowed with life. Just glowed. You couldn’t picture it if you tried.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He barely knew I played. It was one of my passing comments weeks prior, but the tone of my voice or the bitterness in my eyes must have pricked his thick hide. He soaked up that pain and remembered it. He pocketed it like so many other trinkets in his box of me. He probably has a case of my mishandled memories by now. A case of me to carry with him now and forever, a heavy burden he’s about to haul to the Underland in his pocket.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>You see, I fell in love with her the moment I pressed her against my feverish stomach. I fell in love strumming her on the deck of the Fleur de Sel. I fell in love sitting at the edge of the cape with her. In Sri-Lanka. During lockdown. On my own when I got lost in India. She never left my side and I fell over and over and over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Back on the porch, I pluck at her silvery bits. A sweet song erupts from her and flows off my lap. It drifts. Over the porch. Across the grass and then lifts, swirling around the fireflies gathering under the barely visible trees. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She is Spain to me. She is Italy. Russia and Belarus. Cape Town. She is Mumbai and Cairo, Hong Kong, and the Strait. But she is also Wolf Trap and Baton Rouge. She is way back when and she is now, and she shields me from the future.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>If I’m being honest, I used to be afraid of the devil. I’d skirt him. Never look him in the eye. Never show him my yellow belly because I was so afraid of what he’d do to it. I spent a lot of time worrying about that. But fear is not a feeling. Fear is a place. Fear is a future place, and worry is the string that we assume will lead us there. It’s such a shame to hang so desperately onto a rope that does nothing but burn our hands and keep us bound to a hypothetical scenario in our own heads.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I think he knew I still grappled with letting go. It was probably his pity that forced him to help me cut that tie. And now I have Joni and her beautiful new strings, steel, not gut this time. She’s not afraid of the devil, and I find myself drawn to those who refuse to waste energy on a silly red man with a forked tail and sinister grin, especially when he’s coaxing us with a carrot we cultivated ourselves.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>My devil – the one I imagine swirling around the kitchen right now – made me drunk, all at once and little by little until I was dependent on him. He made me bleed, all at once and little by little. But here I am. Still on my feet after gulping and letting out case after case of him, stringless and somehow plucking a six-string like my life depended on it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But I am not so stupid to think I’ll have this protection forever – this bandage for my nostalgic heart. I will grow a new skin – thicker – and it will be more flexible to account for all that new growth ready to burst out of my flesh like thorns. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>My new protection won’t feel like home. It won’t be this. It won’t sound like my youth. It won’t smell like my old Chevy. It won’t taste like violet and leather, my grandmother’s purse. It won’t be a folded photo of three dogs in a line, each taking a piss on my old grey barn. It will not be a trinket or memory from the past. My new protection will be paint or charcoal. I will live in paint, poetry, and pencil sketches, and be woven into the rope that binds us so firmly to the present, but not the past or the future. Fear lives in the future, regret in the past, and the devil has no time or either. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That big beautiful moon lives right here. Joni strums the now like an angel would. Here. Where the grass is blue. Where the details are lost when the breeze hits your dripping face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I know it hurts him to know what she means to me. She’s not coaxing siren songs of the present from me but rather memories or newfound worries about his intentions after all these years of stalemates and seductions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She’s no closer to helping me see his reality than he ever was. I can’t imagine how distressed that makes him. Or maybe I can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe I can imagine that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe I can.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A year ago, running through a dusty crowded street to catch a train, another devil crossed our path. The crone had lips like his and was draped in red and blue oily rags. She caught his arm and snatched him out of the fray for all of their three-second exchange. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t lose him,” she’d growled. He yanked away and straightened his jacket. “Stay with him,” she laughed again, then grabbed his hand and kissed it. Just like that. She kissed it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I couldn’t stop staring through the throng of people. What fresh hell had she brought down on herself? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He turned back to me, teeth bared, and we took off again only to hear her yell over the crowd, “Stay with him, devil, but be prepared to bleed!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We didn’t speak for nearly four hours after that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>We’d missed the train.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hear him in the doorway. He’s been standing for a while, probably holding drinks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>I could look at him now, but maybe not yet.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Scotch and water?” he finally says because as comfortable as he is with silence, he’d never choose it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I hear the clink of two glasses on the table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So Svalbard,” I say off the porch. “One pack each? Will you make me choose her over clothes.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Never,” he insists wryly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The ice in my glass shifts.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can’t know how much my heart hurts,” I say to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I assume he doesn’t nod or shift or drink. He says nothing at all.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you?” I ask. “Know?” I finally look at him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” he says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“One pack,” I scoff.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He smiles with that nearly perfect schoolyard charm and we sit in silence, Joni still on my lap. The crickets die down and give way to rustling leaves. The moon rises with the breeze that feels like a hot breath on our wet faces.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After an hour, maybe two or three, sitting in relative placidity with our scotches turning more and more to water, I say out of curiosity, “Have you been prepared to bleed?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He takes a long time to answer. He minces in his head, more than I’ve ever seen him mince before. He sips. He looks out over the deep blue night and sips again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I bleed like wine, Will. Bitterly but with such celebration. Each and every day of my life.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is that what you want for me?” I ask.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I do.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The light over us flickers as thunder rolls in the distance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m attached to her,” I say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You are attached to what she represents.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You keep trophies.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I scoff and point in the kitchen window.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He waves that away and points to his temple. “That is as temporary as the memory of its acquisition. It’s in one hole and out the other.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can be and often is crass. Don’t let anyone tell you he’s all flowers and opulent symphonies.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I need her,” I say.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not taking her from you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You think she’s making me depressed.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Then why the one pack rule?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a rule.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Are you jealous of a guitar?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He laughs. “While it would be tempting to spend my days perched on your lap while you coo off-key, no, Will. I’m not a jealous man.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Does he hear himself sometimes?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>I’m getting hot. “She evokes in me the very feeling you have been striving so hard to make me face.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And what feeling is that, Will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Power. Peace. The peace within my own potential. I feel it and it feeds me, like a totem. She reminds me of my old life–”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He scoffs.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“–and she shows me how far I’ve come despite you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He snickers under his breath.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Don’t you keep tokens?” I ask. “The things that show you your own evolution? I’m not crazy for wanting to feel the pain of the past sometimes so I know how far I’ve come.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sits, holding his long empty glass, and his gaze floats over my face. He’s biding his time. I’m tantruming again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“She makes me feel like I have control over the things I know I have no control over,” I say. “She reminds me to live. To feel things. To not be dragged down or pulled in over my head. She’s my life preserver in the shitstorm.” I knock back the rest of the scotch as the first taps of rain hit the roof.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’ve never had something that did that for you?” I ask. “Something that reminded you to open your eyes and breathe when the world is overwhelming every cell in your brain?!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rain bursts. But we sit in silence. Through the storm. Through the dawn, or maybe it just feels that stretched out and tiresome. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” he finally says. “I’ve never needed something like that.” Then he stands, gathers his drink, his sketchbook, his ego, and returns to the house to bleed a little before we pack lightly for Svalbard in the morning.</span>
</p>
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